In Which Dying Young is Not as Glamorous as Kesha Makes it Sound
by Briony8869
Summary: College AU: Dean Winchester is a hot mess, and Castiel Smith wants to save him by forcing him to join the obviously lame Campus Christian Fellowship. Dean doesn't think he deserves to be saved, but he thinks this Castiel guy is kind of all right. Destiel obviously.
1. Chapter 1

Back in its glory days, 4Loko was a heady mix of caffeine, guarana and a shit ton of alcohol. Obviously anything that good couldn't last, and the FDA forced 4Loko's overlords to change the ingredients so people would stop, like, dying after drinking it and whatever. So, tragically, the 5 brightly colored cans of the beverage that Dean Winchester had downed in the past hour were nothing but sugar, water, fake ass green apple flavoring, and of course a shit ton of alcohol.

You could make up for the lack of caffeine though by downing a few 5 hour energy shots, as Dean had learned from the wise chapter leader of the Lambda Phi Epsilon frat party he was currently crashing.

About 80 drunken, sweaty undergrads were testing the capacity of the historic Lambda Phi frat house by jumping up and down in time to some shitty pop song. Dean felt hot, uncomfortably hot, and even through the fog of his drunkenness he could feel his ears ringing from the loud music. The floor below him felt pleasantly distant, and if it wasn't for the fact that everything around him was now spinning he wouldn't have known that he had lurched up off of the couch at all.

It took him four tries to open the fucking screen door to the back porch. His uncooperative hands were having trouble grasping the handle and pushing down.

Still, life was good. He staggered optimistically into the cooler night air; air that was only slightly befouled by the cigarettes of the young ladies huddled amongst each other on the steps. Dean made an attempt to nod politely at the artfully made up young women, but in so doing lost his balance. He stumbled down the steps gracelessly into the yard.

"Goddamn he is drunk as fuuuuuck." Meg Masters laughed. Dean Winchester appeared to be having trouble walking upright. He looked more like a sailor straggling across the deck of a battleship in stormy seas than a dude making his way across a perfectly stationary lawn.

"Cute though." Ruby said, tapping her fingers on the side of her big red party cup. It was filled half way up with vodka, sweetened with just a splash of Mountain Dew so you couldn't tell how cheap the booze was. Drinking it was like downing rubbing alcohol after eating a sweet tart. "Hey big guy!" She called out to the bow legged dude, currently fighting a losing battle against the fence gate. "You thirsty?"

Dean swung around to address the two chicks. He wasn't really taking in much detail at the moment, but he could tell that one of them, the one holding a cup at him, was blonde. The other one had dark curly hair. Both of them had breasts, of that he was certain.

"My mouth's dry." He responded honestly.

Meg giggled wickedly and took another drag on her cigarette, looking at Ruby to see how this was going to play out.

"This'll help that, baby." Ruby said, and with Florence Nightingale-like caretaking sweetness she pressed her slightly greasy red party cup into his hands. "Drink up."

Dean took a sip, made a face at the taste, forgot what he was doing, and turned what attention he had back to the stubborn fence gate. There was a simple latch mechanism on it that most of the raccoons in the neighborhood had figured out how to work, but it was proving too much for Dean's faculties at the moment.

"Here babe." The blonde girl flipped the latch up easily and loosed Dean Winchester on the world.

"Wanna come?" Dean asked, turning around in a wide arc and trying to focus on his helpmate. Sober Dean would have told you his type was brunettes but when one is too drunk to see straight physical appearances don't seem to matter anymore. He was past caring what gender they were, in all honesty. He took another drink that tasted like burning and was reminded why he'd stopped drinking from that cup. He forgot in another two seconds.

"No, Meg and I are gonna stay here, hon." Ruby said, smiling sweetly. From the corner of her eye she saw a cop car driving around the block for the second time. This party was about to get busted and God help you if you had an open container. "You go have fun huh?" She said, pulling out a perfectly legal cigarette and walking back to join Meg on the stairs. They could watch the fun from there. Dean was left on the sidewalk, underage, visibly drunk, and carrying a huge cup of what was pretty much pure alcohol.

"Cool… thanks?" He said, and began to wander away.

Through some miracle the cops did not stop Dean, and he was able to wander around his little college town in quiet, dizzy peace. He kept sipping his vodka and mountain dew absently and eventually he was caught up with another group of extremely drunk college students from a party a few blocks down. There's a tentative sort of camaraderie among the very drunk. It's like when two dogs out for walks meet one another on the sidewalk. They can either run around yipping with excitement at having found a fellow, or they can try to bite each other's faces off. A girl whose eye makeup had smudged all down her face grabbed Dean's arm with a big dumb smile. A huge guy with blood shot eyes started patting him on the back aggressively. He might have been the girl's boyfriend, none of them could really remember at that point. Dean smiled innocently.

"LOOK!" The drunk girl announced gleefully, attempting to point at a tent set up in an empty parking lot. "JESUS BURGERS!" She lurched forward with drunken determination, the combination of her high heels and her dampened coordination making her walk like a t-rex.

"Jesus Burgers?" Dean repeated.

Every Friday night the Campus Christian Fellowship provided free burgers from midnight to 2am for the drunk kids on campus. They called them Jesus Burgers so that even the dumbest, most inebriated college student in the world would learn to associate Jesus with something good and helpful. Also, delicious.

Dean, unwisely, finished the rest of his red plastic cup in two big gulps (the equivalent of four shots in less than ten seconds) and staggered over to the barbecue.

"Would you like a burger?" A young man wearing a red and white-checkered apron asked. Dean found he was having a hard time focusing on him, but the last thing he saw before blacking out were the prettiest pair of blue eyes he'd ever seen.

Dean woke up in the hospital.

He felt, roughly, like he'd been beaten all over his body with a meat tenderizer, that his skull had been filled with ball bearings, and that he'd thrown up at least 12 times. That last one was true, actually.

"You're awake." Someone said, and Dean turned to see some dude he'd never met sitting next to his bed. There was a red and white-checkered apron hanging on the back of his chair, inexplicably.

"Who…" Dean was going to ask who the brown haired, sallow faced guy sitting next to him was but his throat felt like he'd swallowed a bunch of tiny knives. He started to cough, and his eyes watered from the pain.

"They tried to pump your stomach last night, but you started throwing up before they could." The dude said. His expression was one of interested concern, and he was sitting strangely rigidly, like he'd been raised in a Victorian boarding school or something. His voice was deep and soothing though, and Dean found it comforting. He leaned back into his pillow shakily, closing his eyes. "Do you remember anything?" the stranger asked.

Dean shook his head slowly, a mistake as it turned out, it made him feel woozier.

"Ah. You had alcohol poisoning." The young man explained. There was no judgment or sympathy in his voice; he could have been telling him the weather. "The doctor said your blood alcohol content was 0.6."

Dean vaguely remembered a presentation during freshman orientation week where a bunch of lame upper classmen had explained that the blood alcohol limit for driving was .08. Math wasn't his strong suit but he remembered decimals enough to know that .6 was a hell of a lot higher than that. At that point a nurse opened the curtain around where Dean was lying. He realized that he was in a makeshift bed in the hallway of an extremely busy hospital.

"You're conscious!" The nurse exclaimed. She was young and heavy set, hair pulled back into a messy bun and with dark circles under her eyes. She'd been up with Dean for three hours last night, making sure he didn't lose consciousness or choke on his own vomit. It had been a bit of a grind, and he remembered none of it. "Stay awake, we need your name and address." She jogged out of sight, going to get all the paperwork that a blacked out Dean Winchester had been unable to provide for her.

When she came back in she was accompanied by a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat.

"How are you feeling?" The doctor asked, expression grim.

Dean sort of managed a groan, which still made his throat hurt.

"Mm hm." The doctor narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "Do you remember how many drinks you had last night?"

Dean didn't remember much of anything about last night, so he gave her a kind of bewildered look.

"From your blood alcohol content, you had about 20. When Castiel found you," She nodded at the brown haired guy in the seat next to Dean. "you were unconscious and turning blue on a public sidewalk. If he hadn't called 911 immediately there is a VERY high likelihood that you would have died. We've been rehydrating you as best as we can and we gave you charcoal to induce vomiting, but you are most definitely going to feel awful for the next day or so. What's your name?"

"Dean… Winchester." Dean managed to say.

"Dean Winchester, say hello to your guardian angel." His doctor said, gesturing to Castiel. The handsome man looked vaguely bashful for a second, fixing his somewhat piercing gaze guiltily back on to Dean. Dean shivered. "You owe him your life." His doctor finished.

Dean filled out the rest of his paperwork pretty much without issue, hoarsely muttering his answers and trying not to burst into flames from the condemning stares of both his nurse and his doctor. When Dean wasn't feeling spectacularly ill and exhausted he mostly just felt shame. He could hear his father's voice in his head, telling him that the time and energy these people had put into keeping his stupid, binge-drinking ass alive could have been spent helping other people out. Every second he spent in this bed on the IV was stealing resources from somebody who hadn't put themselves in the hospital out of their own stupidity. Castiel just sat by, silently and without any visible emotion while Dean tried to figure out the quagmire that is health insurance.

When he got to the line that asked for his birthdate, Dean couldn't help but pause. He was 19, and he'd just been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. Could they cite him for that? He froze in indecision.

"You won't get cited here hon." His nurse said, smiling at his moment of panic. "We'd rather have kids come here and get help than stay at home and die because they're afraid of a $500 fine."

"Thanks." Dean muttered, and after a few more scribbles handed her the completed form. He absently reached over to yank the IV out of his arm so he could leave but his nurse actually slapped his wrist.

"What the hell are you doing, Ken doll?" She asked, reproachfully. "Were you just going to rip that out of your arm? Are you an idiot?" She began the process of removing the drip in a quick, professional way.

"I…" Dean glanced back and forth between his nurse and Castiel, who was staring at him in his infuriatingly unreadable way. Dean sighed. "I'm just an idiot." He muttered, closing his eyes.

Castiel ended up driving Dean back to his dorm. Every time the car accelerated, no matter how cautiously, Dean felt a wave of nausea that felt like his brains were going to drip out of his ears. He just gritted his teeth and tried not to look too miserable though. He deserved this. This was all his own fucking fault.

"You shouldn't be too hard on yourself." Castiel said, like he could read Dean's mind. "People make mistakes."

"People do a lot of things dude." Dean said with a groan. "Thanks. By the way. For uh… saving me." His throat still felt pretty rough but he was able to speak without tearing up now, so that was an improvement.

Castiel shrugged.

"You seemed ill when you took your burger from me at the barbecue. I thought you looked as though you were in need of assistance. Particularly when you collapsed."

"You're that guy!? The Christian Coalition guy?" Dean asked, looking at his companion with new eyes. Pretty much Dean's entire life up to this point had been built on the assumption that Christians were dicks, and the kind of Christian who would actually spend their time feeding free burgers to drunk people were the actual worst.

"I am a member of the Campus Christian Fellowship." Castiel said, very seriously.

"Huh." Dean replied with an appraising look. "Do you get like, Jesus points for helping people out or whatever?"

Castiel pulled into the temporary parking lot next to Dean's dorm.

"Dean." Castiel said, as he put the car in park. "I've made it a part of my personal mission on campus this year to help students who are struggling with alcohol and drugs."

"I…" Dean wanted to protest but Castiel had fixed his cold blue gaze on him and Dean found he couldn't think of anything to say.

"I would very much like to remain in contact with you, to make sure that you continue to thrive at this university and forge healthy relationships." Dean had heard speeches like that before, from soulless campus advisors who called him Dan and kicked him out of their offices after 20 minutes.

"Healthy relationships?"

"I noticed that none of your inebriated companions knew who you were." Castiel said. "When I was trying to revive you they said they'd never met you before. I think you would benefit from coming to our Campus Christian Fellowship meetings every Wednesday."

"Oh no. No way." He managed. "I'm not, I don't believe…"

"You don't have to believe in God to come to the meetings Dean. You can come purely from curiosity." Castiel's gaze was still fixed on Dean, expression serious.

Dean tried to think of a way to protest this. There was no fucking way he was going to a Christian Fellowship meeting. He couldn't even commit to going to class every week, there was no way he was going to be organized enough for these douchebags. But before he could articulate any of this to the scruffy dude currently staring at him like a statue, he felt a surge of Winchester self-hate. Last night he'd drunk enough booze to kill himself, and the only person who cared enough to help him was somebody he'd never met before. Castiel had just spent 8 hours of his life being puked on and scared shitless over some dude he didn't even know. Dean owed him something for that. Even if it was going totally suck balls.

"Ok dude." Dean said. "I'l give it a shot."

Dean's nurse had told him that he should go back to his dorm, drink a lot of water, and rest for at least a day before he tried to do anything too strenuous. He slumped to his dorm room, praying inwardly that his roommate would be out.

Of course he wasn't.

"Hey Ash." Dean greeted the party side of a truly spectacular mullet. His skinny roommate was wearing a cutoff t-shirt and boxers and was on the edge of their futon, completely engrossed in an episode of Honey Boo Boo Child broadcast on their tiny ass television.

"Dean, check this shit out, this toddler is making me rethink my entire life philosophy." Ash said, not even bothering to give his roommate a cursory glance while Dean stepped around the piles of dirty laundry and various food wrappers that littered the floor of their 15 ft. square living space.

"Sure man." Dean muttered. It wasn't that he disliked Ash. In fact, the two of them had bonded pretty epically in the first couple weeks of school over a mutual love of video games, weed, and booze. But Ash could be something of an abrasive personality, and Dean was in a bit too delicate a state at the moment to deal with any abrasions whatever.

Finally Ash turned around to say hey, and he saw Dean in all his recently hospitalized glory.

"Dean! Man! You look like you just got keelhauled or some shit, what the fuck happened to you?"

"I uh, drank too much." Dean said, rubbing his eyes exhaustedly. "Went to the hospital. Can we like, talk about this later?"

Ash looked at him concernedly for a few seconds, but apparently something about Dean's expression sunk in and he just nodded. He even pulled the curtains and lowered the lights in consideration of Dean's hangover, but he still finished the episode of Honey Boo Boo, albeit at a lower volume.

"You got to start taking better care of yourself man." Ash said, when Dean audibly moaned as he lay down on his bed.

"Mmm." Dean responded, noncommittally.

"OH!" Ash said, "Your dad called! He said you weren't picking up your phone so he called mine."

"What'd he say?" Dean asked, not bothering to remove his arm from from its position over his face.

"He said the same thing everybody's dad says, man, he said to call him back."

"kay. Ash, can I sleep?" Dean muttered. "I feel like shit."

"If you feel as bad as you look man, I do not friggin' envy you."

"Thanks Ash." Dean said.

He had no intention of calling his father back. What would he say? "Hey Dad, I almost drank myself to death, no big?" No, he already knew every word of the severe verbal flagellation he was going to receive for that nonsense, best if he just kept it quiet. But the thought of his dad led to other unpleasant thoughts, like Sam, and the fact that at this very moment Sam was occupying a house with freaking Adam Milligan, the little brother they never knew they had. Dad, Kate, Sam, and Adam were just one big happy family now, now that Dean was out of the house and conveniently tucked away as a freshman at KU.

The thought of his family made Dean's head throb more violently than it already had been, so he tried to think of softer, nicer things so he could drift off to sleep. He ended up, drowsily, irrationally, thinking about Castiel. The last image he drew up in his mind before he fell into a deep, necessary sleep were Castiel's concerned eyes, and the strange, almost intimidating expression that had drawn him out of oblivion earlier that day.

Castiel Smith lived alone in a basement level efficiency. It was, as the name suggests, efficient, inasmuch as one could efficiently roll off of one's bed and land in the bathroom it was so freaking small. He didn't really mind though, Castiel liked living simply. He had a bed, a laptop, a kitchen large enough that you could just about open the oven door all the way, and a tiny little cube of a shower. His necessities were met, and he was able to lead an almost Franciscan lifestyle here. He slung his coat over the back of his fold up chair and lay back on his twin size bed with a sigh. He was so tired that he felt drunk (not that he'd know what that felt like, he'd never drunk more than a sip of wine in his life) but even so he couldn't go to sleep without praying. He started his prayer as he always did, thanking God for his friends and his home and his family in the familiar little hum of a prayer that he kept forgetting to be actually sincere about. The next bit of the prayer was usually more specific, the part where he felt as though he was having a friendly chat with God. He thought about his actions of the past evening and felt a rush of… what? Excitement? Surely he shouldn't be feeling excitement about being exhausted and spending the night in the hospital. But he realized with a glow what he was feeling. Purpose. _Thank you God for sparing Dean Winchester, and in your name I will try to help him find his path in this life. _

"Am I dressed ok for this?" Dean Winchester asked Castiel, as he stepped out the elevator of his dorm and found his "guardian angel" waiting for him in the lobby. It was Tuesday night, and Castiel had volunteered to walk with Dean from his dorm over to the Christian Fellowship meeting. Castiel looked at the young man whom he had made his own personal project appraisingly. Dean was dressed in slightly faded but respectable jeans and a striped button up top.

"You look perfectly acceptable." Castiel said, tilting his head slightly to the side. "Were you worried about your outfit being too revealing?"

"I…" Dean could not for the life of him tell if Castiel was joking, his expression looked the same as it did for anything other inexplicable thing he ever said. "Sure." He shrugged. "I don't want to look like a slut or anything for my first Christian Fellowship meeting."

Castiel narrowed his eyes.

"We don't refer to anyone as sluts, Dean. There are only people who make bad choices."

"Ok…" Dean was beginning to feel like agreeing to go to this thing had been an incredibly bad choice. "Well, let's go praise God huh? Hallelujah!"

Dean and Cas began the walk across campus to the ECM, which was the hip nickname for the office of Ecumenical Christian Ministries. Castiel walked in the same stiff, rigid way that he sat, once again giving Dean the weird feeling that he was with somebody from another time. The silence was awkward.

"This silence is awkward." Castiel said.

"Yeah, uh, um, how're you doing?" Dean asked, slightly desperately. Human interaction could be hard sometimes.

"I'm well. You seem to have recovered from your dehydration."

"I… uh… yeah. I drank a lot of water I guess." The doctor had told him to rest in his dorm for a day and Dean had tripled that, just to be safe. And, you know, he didn't really want to go to class. And he kind of wanted to finish this video game he'd been playing. But at least 80% of it had been worry over his health. Maybe.

"You look much better now." Castiel said.

"Well, I'm not puking all over you. That's gotta be a plus." Dean laughed.

"No really. You look very handsome."

"Y'know, somehow I feel like this conversation has taken a turn for the MORE awkward rather than the less. Maybe we should go back to silence."

"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"Whoa dude, I'm not uncomfortable, just… uh… so… tell me about yourself! I know like, nothing about you."

Castiel walked for a few steps in silence, as though really trying not to mess this up. Dean wanted to pat him on the back, help him through this whole "social skills" thing. It wasn't like he was the best at talking to people, sure, but Castiel seemed like he was from another planet or something.

"I'm a Junior." Castiel said. "My name is Castiel Smith and I study Art History and Religious Studies."

"And in your free time you give burgers to drunk dumbasses." Dean smirked.

"I help out people who need it. Or, I guess, I try to."

"Well, I needed it." Dean was about to go on, but they had made it all the way up the steps to the ECM and he didn't want "Gushy and Thankful Dean" to be his first impression.

Castiel opened the door for him.

"Ready?" He asked.

"As I'll ever be." Dean said, and stepped inside.

The Campus Christian Fellowship had about 68 members on paper, but of those 68 maybe 12 would show up to their weekly meetings, and at most 30 for the big monthly gathering. This was a problem that the leadership had been attempting to address for years, but after phone calls and pleading emails and threats and pizza party incentives they'd all but given up. Unless they actually paid people to come, this little group was going to be the best they had. Running a campus organization is startlingly simple once you get past the initial paperwork. You recruit as many freshman as you can while they're still frightened baby deer wandering vulnerably around campus, and then you set up a circle of plastic chairs every week and talk about stuff. That's it. And it looks really freaking great on your resume.

When Castiel and Dean walked in, a pale and slim redhead was in the process of setting up the pivotal chairs.

"Hello Anna." Castiel said, and Dean could already pick up on an ever so slight hint of fondness in his tone.

"Castiel," Anna growled, separating two chairs that had stuck together with such violence that the plastic almost cracked. "Those bastards from the campus Republicans left the room a mess AGAIN you will not believe what I just had to clean up and…" She looked up and noticed Dean. "And you have a guest! So I should be nice!" Anna smiled apologetically.

"I'm Dean." Dean gave a little wave. "Need help with those chairs?"

"No, but there's a giant thing of lemonade over there I've been putting off trying to lift, so if one of you big strong boys would get that set up on the table for me I'd be forever grateful."

"No problem!" Dean said with what he knew was a cheeky grin. He had an arsenal of expressions he used on chicks, the first was "thoughtful pout", the second was "smug smirk" and the third was "cheeky grin." He saved the "Tormented soul" face for times of real need. (When he was hitting on dudes he was usually too drunk to put any of his trademark faces into action. His sexuality was something that he'd decided to just not think about and maybe it would go away.)

He turned to go lift the lemonade thing, but to his surprise Castiel was already walking away from it. Somehow he'd set it up on the table all by himself in the time it had taken Dean to smile winningly.

"Dude! You lifted that by yourself?" Dean asked, looking at the lemonade jug in shock. It had to be like, at least 10 gallons.

"Yes." Castiel responded flatly, staring at Dean as though this were no thing. Dean didn't have time to blabber in disbelief any more about it because Anna put them to work putting the chips ahoy and carrot sticks out.

Eventually, everything settled, and the 8 people who had decided to show up for the meeting took their seats in the chairs Anna had set up. Dean sat next to Cas of course, he was really starting to feel attached to the guy. To his surprise Anna took his seat on his other side.

"Aren't you running this shindig?" He whispered in her ear as she sat down. She shook her head with an expression he couldn't quite read and pointed to a young woman at the other side of the circle.

"Ladies and gentlemen." A smallish woman with straight blonde hair greeted everyone with a bright, endearingly lopsided smile. "I see some new faces, so we should start with introductions right? Well, I'm Ruby. And I'm really happy to see all of you here."


	2. Chapter 2

Dean felt like he kinda maybe almost recognized Ruby from somewhere, but he couldn't quite tell. There was no mistaking her position of authority within the fellowship; even though the chairs were set up in a circle she may as well have been at the head of a long table. Anna was sitting next to him, staring at their president with an expression of barely masked irritation. She looked kind of hot, honestly. Both of them did, it was totally weird. Dean had not foreseen the number of hot ladies that would be in the freaking Campus Christian Fellowship.

A bunch of people introduced themselves who, let's face it, Dean didn't even try to remember. At Ruby's request everybody went around the circle saying their name, where they were from, and what they were studying. He only perked up to pay attention when it came to Castiel, because Castiel was the only person Dean thought was interesting.

"I'm Castiel Smith. I'm from Connecticut, and I study Art History." He said, disproving Dean's theory that he was interesting. Dean was about to go next but Castiel cut him off. "This is Dean." Cas introduced his friend. "He almost died of alcohol poisoning on Saturday and I asked if he would come here tonight."

Dean felt all the blood rush to his face as he received a stunningly humiliating half-hearted smattering of applause.

"Castiel," A stunning dark skinned black woman who had introduced herself as Raphael (a fact Dean miraculously remembered because c'mon, teenage mutant ninja turtles) leaned forward with interest. "Is this the guy you left the Jesus Burgers stand for?"

"Yes." Castiel said flatly. "He seemed ill."

"Is it actually called Jesus Burgers?" Dean asked, trying to change the subject from his near death experience. "Doesn't that like, sound like you're eating Jesus?"

Everyone in the circle stared at Dean in judgmental silence, save Anna, who appeared to be suppressing a giggle.

"Like you ground Jesus up and made burgers out of him? To eat?" He tried again, in case anybody had misunderstood him.

Castiel flushed in embarrassment, and Dean didn't even care. That's what you get for not letting a man introduce his own damn self.

Ruby was staring at Dean in a strange way. A small smile flickered on her face.

"Clearly you aren't a Catholic." She said, and for a second Dean felt kind of uncomfortable. He'd been envisioning this meeting as a kind of "Book of Mormon" type deal where he'd be surrounded by a bunch of cheerful idiots who had cross tattoos on their ankles and listened to Kenny Chesney. Ruby didn't fit that description at all, and he kind of got a bad feeling when she looked at him like that.

"I'm Dean. I'm not a Catholic, I'm a junior, and I'm still undecided." He said. "For my major."

"Well Dean." Ruby said, leaning back in her chair and chewing on her pen thoughtfully. "We're happy to have you."

The rest of the meeting went along without much incident. Somehow Dean ended up volunteering to run a bake sale. It doesn't matter what religion you belong to, faith groups all share the mystical power of roping you into working for them. Dean had volunteered to run the damn thing before he knew what words were coming out of his mouth.

A cute little blonde dude in a "Weenie Hut" uniform led the meeting, talking about ways to keep God in one's daily life. Dean kind of zoned out. After about 40 minutes of pretending to be interested Dean noticed people starting to shift in their chairs and look at their watches, universal body language symbols of either a bad date or a meeting drawing to a close. When Castiel stood up Dean joined him enthusiastically.

"That it?" He asked, but instead of grabbing their stuff and heading to the door everybody had started to sit on the floor for some reason, around a candle that Ruby was lighting.

Dean dubiously followed suit and lowered himself onto the greasy carpet in a cross-legged position. Castiel, sitting to Dean's left, held his hand out palm up to Dean with a look of calm confidence. Dean took it kind of uncomfortably.

"Are we summoning a demon or something?" He whispered in Castiel's ear.

"It's the prayer circle, Dean." Castiel said.

Anna took Dean's other hand and smiled at him.

"Anything you say in this circle stays in the circle, so you can pray for whatever is bothering you most, no matter how personal." Anna said.

Dean gulped. Raphael turned the lights out and Ruby lit the candle with a lighter.

"It's against fire code so just keep this our little secret huh?" She said with a smile. Everyone but Dean and Anna laughed.

One by one they went around the circle and gave their prayers. Some of them were light and fluffy, one guy gushed over how great his girlfriend was, some girl prayed that she do well on a science test. But some were really heavy. One girl who had smiled cheerfully through the meeting shared that her dad was dying of cancer. She didn't make it halfway through before her voice was shaking and she had to stop for a few minutes. Anna went over and hugged her silently until she recovered enough to finish her prayer. Dean's palms started sweating and the thought that it was grossing out Castiel made him sweat more in a vicious cycle.

Castiel prayed thanks to God for granting him clarity to his personal mission for this semester, and asked for the fortitude to stick to it.

And then everyone was staring at Dean. They all looked so kind and encouraging and Dean found that he had forgotten what it felt like to breathe.

"I… I want to thank Cas for making sure I didn't die on the street this Saturday. And uh, I just…" He thought of his Dad, coming home drunk and wrecked after their mom's death. He thought of his brother, who'd been pretty much his sole responsibility up to this point of his life. He thought of his mom. And of course, he thought of Adam and Kate, breaking their way into his little comfortable world.

For a second he made eye contact with Ruby, from across the circle. In the semi darkness, lit up from below by the flickering orange glow the candle, she looked strangely wicked. Like she was enjoying his discomfort. Dean took a deep breath and shifted.

"And I'd like to thank God for inventing pie. Because it is just so damned tasty." He said with a smile, stuffing his consuming worries about his family back down in his subconscious. Some people laughed, some looked annoyed. Ruby just smiled to herself thoughtfully. Castiel, on the other hand, seemed to think that Dean had done a good job and looked expectantly at Anna, ready for the next prayer.

Dean felt a lot less awkward with Castiel on the walk home. They were silent for a great deal of it, but it was a comfortable silence. Instead of the usual nervous babbling Dean was compelled to make in most social situations, he let himself get lost in his own thoughts. Castiel's presence at his side was pleasant and nonjudgmental. They stopped walking when they reached the driveway leading up to Dean's dorm.

"Thank you for coming, Dean." Castiel said.

"Thanks for uh… making me go?" Dean responded.

At that Cas nodded with a little almost smile, and then he turned and walked away. Dean watched him leave, but was suddenly gripped with a need to keep Castiel around just a little bit longer.

"Whoa dude, hold up!" Dean called out. Castiel turned, confused. "Um… I was going to a party this weekend. You want to come?" Dean asked hesitantly. "You can make sure I don't almost die again."

Castiel looked nervous.

"I don't usually go to parties." He said. "Will there be drinking?"

"Probably. But I won't, not after last weekend." Dean smiled. "You never know. It might be fun."

Castiel looked very thoughtful, and then nodded.

"I'll go with you. Thank you for inviting me."

"Sweet. See you then." Dean grinned winningly and then went into his dorm. Castiel felt puffed up with purpose as he made his way across campus to where his car was parked. Dean had asked him to join him at a party. His mission was going quite well.

One Pamela Barnes was throwing the shindig. She was a KU psych major who'd taken a gleeful pleasure in sexually harassing Dean the whole week and a half he'd managed to keep a job at the campus Smoothie Shack. It was her 21st birthday party, and Dean had earned a facebook invite along with 150 other of her nearest and dearest. The thing was going to be a freaking shit show.

Dean had blown off classes the whole week. It wasn't intentional, he'd had every intention of going. He'd set his alarm and everything. When it went off though, all he could manage to do was turn it off and stare at the ceiling in frozen dread for another hour, convincing himself that he was ruining his life. Ash had cautiously asked if Dean was doing ok a few times, but after the third hoarse "fuck off" he'd stopped trying and gone back to eating chicken nuggets and designing heat engines.

Cas texted him on Saturday about the party, and Dean remembered that was something he had said he was going to do. For a second the thought of leaving his dorm room seemed exhausting and impossible. But the thought of seeing Castiel Smith at a party was enough to get him out of bed, finally. He put on his usual party get up, a form fitting gray t-shirt and jeans and checked himself out in the mirror. He had some dark circles under his eyes and he looked kind of pale, but other than that he was generally fuckable. He shrugged and went out to meet Cas.

Castiel was waiting for Dean in the lobby of his dorm again. He was standing in the little area in the corner of the lobby where the Resident Advisors held meetings for all the kids in their hallway. Dean had obviously never attended one, but from the look of the posters and stuff on the wall the topic of this month's meeting had been "Self Confidence." Castiel was staring in a mirror that had various encouraging statements written on post-it notes all over it. "LOVE YOUR BODY!" a tiny pink square read. "You. Are. Perfect." Somebody had written in highlighter. Castiel was squinting at a note which read "Real women have curves!"

"Hey dude!" Dean said. "Having a fat day huh? Let me tell you, you got nothing to worry about. Too scrawny, if anything."

"I don't understand this note." Castiel said, ignoring Dean's nonsense. "Many women do not have curves. This post-it appears to be questioning their validity as women?"

"It's a self confidence thing dude, I don't get it either. You ready to go party?"

"I'm slightly nervous." Castiel said. He looked it. He had clearly put forth some effort in picking a nice outfit, his black jacket and red tie looked pretty damn good on him, but he didn't seem to be able to stand still. Also, his eyes were so wide and frightened looking that Dean felt the need to just reach out and hug him or something to make it better.

He settled for patting him on the back.

"Don't worry. It's gonna be fine."

Pamela lived in an old church that some landlord had bought and converted into a rentable living space. It sounded like a really cool idea, but Pamela had told Dean that it was actually really drafty and the plumbing sucked and she kind of regretted it. But the first floor was pretty big and from the sound of thumping bass from three blocks down Dean figured it was a good place to throw a party. As they approached the sounds of the ruckus Dean saw Castiel's already adorable face turn into that of a frightened puppy.

"We don't have to go in if you don't want." Dean said, touching Castiel's arm gently.

"No." Said Cas. "I told you I'd go with you."

"Ok dude. Just chill, everything will be fine." Dean patted Cas's back again.

"Does that house… have a steeple?"

"Yeah, uh, Pam's weird."

A few minutes laster Castiel was standing alone at the corner of Pamela's large living room, next to a table that had about 150 jello shots and a large container similar to the one he'd lifted onto the table for the fellowship meeting. However, this container contained something called Jungle Juice, which a dude with blood shot eyes had explained to him was a mixture of grain alcohol, caffeine pills, and Kool-Aid.

The music was loud and offensive. People were shouting their conversations while standing right next to each other. That said, the huddles of friends and drinking and laughing seemed to be having a good time. The hostess, who Castiel had sought out to thank because that's what he'd been raised to do, was a beautiful brown haired woman with great eye makeup. She'd be very attractive if she hadn't been too drunk to stand up straight. When Castiel approached her she'd walked right past him, kissed Dean enthusiastically on the mouth and dragged him away to lord knows where, leaving Cas in his current position by the booze table.

He didn't mind. He'd wait for Dean to come back.

A young woman walked up to him. He didn't recognize her. She was short, with wavy brown hair and big brown eyes. There was something innocent about her face, all big eyes and rosy cheeks like a child, but the way she was looking at him wasn't childlike or innocent at all.

"Heya." She said. "I'm Meg."

"All right." Said Castiel.

Meg walked over to the jello shots and looked at the array of colors. "What's your poison?" She asked. "Strawberry or… blue?"

"I'm not drinking."

"Well good because these are jello so you kind of have to eat them. Or uh, suck them." She smiled up at him suggestively and handed him a plastic cup filled with badly set blue jello.

"I don't want this." He said, putting it back down on the table.

"Really?" Meg licked around the edges of her shot obscenely.

"I don't drink." Cas repeated. This girl must be slow or something. She took her Jell-o shot and then grinned at him.

"What are you like batman or something?" She asked. "What's your name?"

"Castiel."

"That's a fucking stupid name."

Cas ruffled slightly.

"I'm named after the Angel of Thursday."

"Didn't know Thursday had an angel. I thought it was Thor's day or something. Or is that too pagan?"

Castiel wanted this conversation to end, and he began scanning the faces around him for Dean. But all he saw was a bunch of rosy cheeked drunken teenagers. His own personal handsome rapscallion was nowhere in sight.

Dean was not visible to Cas because he happened to be up in the steeple with a very drunk Pamela and Pamela's apparent girlfriend, some British chick named Bella.

"Nice view from up here." Dean said, looking out at the skyline of KU's Lawrence campus. From a distance it kind of looked like a medieval city.

Pamela pulled back from a pretty epic makeout session with her girlfriend to give Dean a censorious look.

"Don't be a dick, Dean." She said.

"Not… not you! The view! I…" Dean stuttered, but it was too late. He already looked like a voyeuristic douchebag.

"It's ok, we know we're lovely." Bella said, nuzzling her girlfriend's neck. They started making out again, and Dean stood on the creaking floorboards of the attic awkwardly. It should have been hot, and God knows if the real world followed porn logic Dean would have managed to work his way in there, but in practice when a drunk lesbian is making out with another drunk lesbian, dudes are almost always not welcome.

"I'm feeling like kind of a third wheel here." Dean said.

"Just cause you are." Pamela said. "I wanted to show you the steeple, you thought it was so cool when I was telling you about it."

"It's totally cool! But I uh… I should probably find my friend."

"That cute little scruffy guy? Yeah find him." Pamela and Bella promptly stopped paying attention to Dean and went back to paying attention to each other. Dean slipped downstairs.

The party had somehow managed to increase in volume and level of intoxication. The huge amount of sugary alcohol had done its work and people were finally drunk enough to dance with each other. The incestuous cliques of people talking had amalgamated into each other and now everybody was dancing with everybody. Dean didn't even bother looking at any of the dancers, and began to look around the outskirts of the party for a very frightened little man hugging the walls. He couldn't see Cas, but he did do a double take at a blonde girl who was hovering near the speakers. _Ruby? _He thought. What was little miss Christian Fellowship doing here? But she had disappeared into another room before he could be sure.

Castiel was in the front yard, watching Meg try to bum a cigarette off of somebody.

"Smoking gives you lung cancer." He said helpfully, attracting glares from a group of skinny hipsters huddled in a cloud of smoke on the porch.

"No shit, Thursday. But you only live once, right?" She said, lighting up with a My Little Pony plastic lighter.

"Precisely. I don't want you to spend your last days on a respirator."

"Wow babe, you really care that much about me?" Meg grinned, taking another swig from her beer. Her number of beverages had now outnumbered her amount of hands, and the cigarette addition was making her practically juggle her intoxicants.

"Yes." Castiel responded. It was true; he cared enough for anyone that he wouldn't wish lung cancer on them.

The music inside the chapel/house was so loud that people in the surrounding neighborhood must have been hearing it. It made Castiel feel uncomfortable; he could only imagine the number of pissed off people trying to sleep in the other houses. Nobody else seemed to mind, most of the partyers seemed to feel that it was just natural that they be the center of the world. They were young and having fun and the more people aware of that the better.

Meg gave a sort of surprised laugh at Castiel's response to her. For just a second her pretense of smarmy coolness was off. She didn't look like some wannabe femme fatale, she looked like a 19 year old girl who was slightly drunk and enjoying someone else's company.

"You want to come to my place?" She asked.

"Why?"

"… Are you serious?"

"Yes."

Meg gave Castiel a disbelieving look before wrapping her arm around the back of his neck and pulling him down for a kiss, spilling a little of her beer down his back in the process. Castiel had not shut his eyes, so from his perspective Meg's face had just sort of come flying at him really fast and then suddenly there were lips on his face and it was kind of wet and extremely uncomfortable.

From the street there was the sound of a car door closing and the little "bleep bleep" noise of a police siren.

"Fucking shit." Meg said, and suddenly Castiel found himself standing alone on the front porch of the chapel, holding Meg's beer and a cup of jungle juice that was not his, reeking of booze, and staring at two policemen.

"Hello." He said. "These are not mine."

Dean heard somebody yell "cops!" and immediately everything was chaos. Underage kids and party crashers were running around trying to find their rides, and everybody was putting out cigarettes of various kinds and trying to find a way out.

For once though he wasn't one of the poor schmucks running out the back door and hiding in closets and shit. He was totally sober, wasn't holding any booze, and had every right to be there. Even knowing that he was doing nothing illegal though, the presence of cops in a situation like this tends to make one's heart pound. All Dean wanted was to find Cas and get the hell out of there.

Somebody had gotten Pamela downstairs and she was currently swaying aggressively in front of a uniformed cop.

"We've gotten noise complaints sweetheart." The cop said. "And I'm pretty sure you've got some under 21s in here."

"I only invited people over 21, if they brought anybody under they're a dick. Look." She pointed at a sign on the booze table that read, "OVER 21 ONLY! DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE!"

"You could go to jail you know." The cop said. He was trying to look like a badass but his eyes kept dropping to her boobs every time she swayed forward. "We just took in some guy for open container on your front yard."

Dean looked out the window at the poor kid who was being made an example of, and realized with shrinking horror who it was.

"That's CAS!" He said, "Dude, Officer whatever, that guy's 21! He doesn't drink!"

"Son, be quiet." The police officer said.

"Oh shit, don't take him in man! Let me out!" Dean pushed his way past the cop who was trying and failing to intimidate a very pissed off Pam. It was too late, the car he'd seen his friend getting pushed into was already a retreating pair of taillights. Dean was left standing on the sidewalk, in cold, sober, helpless panic.


	3. Chapter 3

Fortunately, (or… sadly?) this wasn't the first time Dean had had to get somebody out of jail for public drunkenness. He knew what you had to do.

First thing was to get a car. You can't go pick somebody up from jail on a bike. He called Ash.

"Ash, you sober?"

"Yeah dude, I'm DMing."

"Is… that a sex thing?"

"It's a Dungeons and Dragons thing man, and you need all your faculties. You're kind of interrupting a raid right now, so uh, if you could hurry it up?"

"My friend Cas just got picked up by the cops for open container and I got to get him out of jail. Could you pick me up? It's kind of an emergency."

"You really need to get your shit together man."

"I know it. Can you help?"

Dean heard Ash say something to his friends and there was general groaning and dismay. Apparently the raid was kind of a big deal.

"Be there in 10 man."

Normally, unless one is really visibly drunk, you will not get taken into custody for holding an open alcoholic container on somebody's front lawn. But sometimes, college police officers are tired of dealing with the same shit every weekend. Sometimes college town police officers are sad people who want to scare everybody and they will take you in for whatever they want. Particularly if your party is full of hot chicks having fun and every single officer there would rather be attending it than ending it.

Such was the case with Cas. Never had the KU police department experienced such a cooperative detainee. Aside from reeking of alcohol, there was no indication that he was drunk. He was painfully polite, and he sat in the cell quietly like a six-year-old girl waiting for her mom to pick her up from dance practice.

The cops were happy when somebody showed up to take him home so quickly.

"CAS! What happened?" Dean asked as his friend was led out of the drunk tank.

"A girl kissed me and then I got arrested." Castiel said.

"What?"

Castiel couldn't think of a way to state what had happened with any more clarity, so he just shrugged.

The police officer working the desk that night looked at Castiel's lack of a record, side-eyed Castiel's obvious non-drunkenness, and decided to let him off with a warning. There was already a legit alcoholic in the tank, and he'd just got a call that a couple of frat pledges had been caught streaking, so dealing with this little ball of fluff didn't really seem all that appealing. He didn't even give him his usual "straighten up or face the consequences" speech, he literally couldn't imagine a kid like this Castiel getting any more square.

Dean, feeling so guilty he could die, had Ash drop them off at a Taco Bell. Sure, chalking up 4 bucks to buy some soft tacos for a dude doesn't exactly make up for getting him arrested, but Dean wasn't made of IHOP money.

Castiel sat in a greasy pastel booth with his nachos and Mountain Dew, looking surprisingly content for a man who'd just been framed and sent to jail. Dean crunched on his cinnamon twists worriedly.

"So this chick named Meg hit on you, then dumped all her booze on you and bailed?"

Castiel nodded.

"She was an unsavory character." He said.

"No fucking kidding. Sorry I abandoned you bro."

"I'm not upset. You were with Pamela. Are you considering dating her?"

"No dude, she's…" Dean looked at Mr. Christian Fellowship and wondered if he should explain the situation in its entirety. Whatever, Castiel was going to have to learn about lesbians someday. "She's into chicks. She likes kissing me and stuff, but nothing like, serious."

"Oh." Castiel said, stiffening in his seat slightly. He decided to change the subject. "Thanks for coming to pick me up so promptly."

"Dude, no problem. I used to have to pick my dad up from jail all the friggin' time." Dean realized what he'd just said and stuffed a cinnamon twist into his mouth to shut himself up.

"That must have been unpleasant for you." Castiel's words seemed cold, but his expression was sweet and concerned.

"Nothing, like, big, he just started drinking a lot after my mom died and uh, yeah I should shut up this isn't your problem."

"My father abandoned me when I was four." Castiel said.

"I'm sorry Cas. That sucks." He offered Cas a sympathetic cinnamon twist.

Castiel smiled at that and took one graciously.

"Did you have a nice evening?" Castiel asked.

Dean stared at him.

"Cas, our party got raided by the cops, you went to jail, and we're in a taco bell at 2:30am."

"That's true."

Dean pondered for a second.

"I actually had kind of a good time." He admitted.

"Me too." Castiel said, and smiled.

Meg walked into her dorm room and immediately sank into her desk chair, groaning in relief as she peeled her high heels off of her aching feet. Ruby was already sprawled out on their futon, eating McDonald's fries and watching Millionaire Matchmaker1.

"You get arrested?" Ruby asked casually.

"No, no thanks to you, bitch." Meg muttered.

"Why are you even here I thought you were all gung-ho on boning somebody tonight." Ruby said, bored and judgey. Meg narrowed her eyes. Last week Ruby'd sexiled her for _SIX HOURS, _so long she'd practically had to camp out in the fucking library, and now she was going to get all up in her shit for wanting to bang somebody on a Friday night?

"I was totally going to do this guy Cassiel but then the cops showed up."

"Tragic. Wait, did you say Castiel?"

"Yeah, gay-ass name right?"

"You CANNOT HAVE SEX WITH CASTIEL." Ruby looked pissed. "He's in my Christian Fellowship group!"

"Really?" Meg threw her head back and started to crack up. Ruby had joined the Christian Fellowship as a joke last year and with Machiavellian efficiency had quickly risen up the ranks. Uriel, the dude who was in charge last year, had apparently preferred her sweet natured (and completely fake) leadership style over Anna Milton's more capable but less giggly brand. She'd outmaneuvered Raphael and Anna and become the new leader, all without going to church or doing one charitable act. Meg had figured she'd ditch it once it got boring, but it was literally the only thing Ruby had on her resume right now so she kind of wanted to keep her spot. Plus Christians were fucking hilarious.

"Well he's cute and I'm gonna bang him." Meg said.

"Meg. No. If you bang him he's going to be here all the time and I'm going to have to be nice for more than an hour a week. Plus he's like a baby unicorn of innocence."

"I'm going to have sex with that baby unicorn, and you can't fucking stop me." Meg said. "Now it's a challenge."

"FUCK YOU." Ruby ate another handful of fries.

But it was too late. Once Meg set her mind to something she was dedicated to it with a kind of insane focus. If she'd had a conscience she would have been a vegan.

That night, lying in bed unaware of the schemes and machinations that were being set in motion in the girls' dorms, Castiel prayed. He thanked God that he hadn't gotten a citation for drinking; which he imagined probably took God by surprise considering the relative tameness of his usual prayers. He prayed for everybody that he usually prayed for, and he prayed for Dean. _God, protect and watch over Dean Winchester, he's had a harder life than he's telling me and he does not deserve any more suffering. He's a good man and he has great potential. He gave me a cinnamon twist. _Cas smiled to himself at that thought. Dean Winchester had offered him a sympathetic cinnamon twist.

Castiel's smile faded and he opened his eyes to the darkness of his room. His heart didn't usually start pounding like this during his evening prayers. It was also unusual for him to spend a long time praying for one particular person more than any other member of humanity, and to smile stupidly to himself as he did so. This was why some religions didn't allow pastors to get married, he remembered guiltily, because they should not put one person above everyone else like a husband or wife will inevitably place their spouse.

Did he think about Dean like a spouse?

Castiel's eyes had adjusted to the darkness at this point and he stared at the slightly molded tiles on his ceiling. Upon reflection, perhaps he didn't think of Dean Winchester like they were married to one another. But he was most definitely thinking of Dean Winchester in the way that a 12-year-old girl thinks of like, Justin Beiber, which in all honesty was not that much better. Crushes of this nature were completely alien to him, he'd managed to get through high school and college without ever suffering under one, and he'd always kind of assumed that God would be the only meaningful relationship in his life.

It was troubling. The fact that Dean was a man was troubling as well, because while every church he had ever attended had told him that God loved everyone unequivocally, and thus loved homosexuals, they also had taught him that God hated the sin of homosexuality.

It had seemed to make sense when it was being explained to him, but now that he was having homosexual feelings it seemed like the argument lost some of its umph.

He scrunched his eyes shut and buried his head in his pillow. Obviously he was getting ahead of himself. He didn't even know if Dean reciprocated any of his feelings, although the thought of him doing so sent a tingly sensation all through him and he felt like he could float off the bed. Did God hate this? Was he incurring God's wrath for feeling this happy? Castiel, for once in his life, decided to just not think about what God wanted, and to think for a little while longer about the freckles on Dean Winchester's nose.

He didn't go to sleep for another hour and a half.

Dean managed to go to his biology lab on Monday morning, and immediately regretted it. He'd missed the lecture so he had no idea what he was doing, and when he tentatively asked a question to his lab director the answer was so long and incomprehensible his brain had shut down halfway through out of self-defense.

His lab partner, a quiet girl who wore a hijab and with whom he had never spoken, just rolled her eyes and did the whole thing herself. Dean watched, feeling guilty and sweaty and wishing he could help, but knew if he tried to do anything he'd just get in the way. He hovered in the background, always on the verge of offering to do something, and never actually doing it.

He probably would have bailed halfway through but he'd told Cas and Ash that he'd meet them for lunch afterwards so he might as well stay. Finally his partner finished whatever the hell it was she had been doing and slid her worksheet over to him so he could copy it. Her look of irritated resignation reminded him so much of his kid brother Sam he almost couldn't stand it, but he just silently and thankfully copied her answers and returned her notebook promptly.

"I don't know if this college thing is for me man." Dean said about 15 minutes later, staring at his cafeteria pizza miserably. "I'm so fucking stressed out. I'm shaking."

"Slow down there hot shot, college is not that bad. You're smart enough to handle intro level bio." Ash replied.

Cas was seated next to Ash, and seemed to be quietly amused by him judging from the way he kept staring. But that might have been pure mullet awe; that struck many during their first encounter with Dean's eccentric roommate.

"Says the dude who disproved his friggin' Physics professor's… theory… thing." Dean protested.

"He was just a grad student T.A." Ash shrugged dismissively. "But his theory on neutrinos was HELLA inaccurate though, shit."

Castiel looked at Dean with pleasant encouragement.

"I agree with Ash, Dean. You're very smart. All you have to do is go to class more regularly and your grades will improve."

Dean smiled at Cas, but remained unconvinced. He had just _gone _to class, and he'd gotten absolutely nothing out of it except high blood pressure and a sinking feeling of inadequacy.

"My brother was always on my ass about ditching school." Dean muttered. "What are you, like a mini Sam?"

Castiel looked slightly ruffled.

"I'm nearly six feet tall!" He said, softly but indignantly.

"Everybody's mini compared to Sam." Dean said, laughing. "Don't worry about it."

Without bothering to say hello or introduce herself to Ash, Anna Milton aggressively took the open seat next to Dean.

"I've called Ruby like six times and she still hasn't got back to me about that FREAKING bake sale." Anna growled. Dean had never heard baked goods described with such violence before. And he felt very strongly about pie.

"Hello Anna." Castiel greeted their new guest calmly.

"Bake sale… didn't I volunteer to run that?" Dean asked. He could almost remember doing so, but it was like he was watching it happen to someone else.

"YOU? Volunteered to run something!?" Ash asked in disbelief. "Shit, I had to remind you to eat this morning."

"It's all kind of hazy but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time?" Dean looked for sympathy with a helpless gesture.

"This always happens with her." Anna shook her head, fuming. "She just shoves all the responsibility off on somebody else and then doesn't show up for her own stuff. You know Ruby hasn't actually been to a SINGLE Jesus burgers barbecue?" Anna asked Ash.

"I… didn't know that." Ash admitted to the girl he'd never met. It wasn't a lie, he didn't even know what Jesus Burgers were so the power dynamics of the leadership were kind of beyond him. He looked at Cas and Dean for help.

"I thought I saw her at Pamela's party on Friday!" Dean said, remembering the blonde woman he'd seen vanish into the kitchen before he could place her. "That's kind of weird for a Christian chick, right?"

"I got arrested." Castiel said, matter of factly. "That could be described as 'kind of weird' for me."

"I don't care if she like, 'parties' or whatever." Anna said, frustratedly. "She just shouldn't say she's going to organize all this stuff if she's not actually going to do it."

"Well… what do I need to do? When's the thing?" Dean asked.

"Next Tuesday." Anna sighed. "We've got a table booked in front of the student union, we've just got to make sure people actually bake stuff. Remember last year Castiel?"

Castiel nodded solemnly.

"Everyone brought grocery store cupcakes." He said.

"It was a disaster."

"Well…" Dean shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "I guess I'll bring it up at the meeting this week?" He'd gone from being the new guy to having an important announcement in one week. What a group. He made eye contact with Cas. "Promise to help?" He asked.

Castiel flushed a little and prayed nobody noticed.

"Of course, Dean." He agreed.

At the campus Christian fellowship meeting, Dean sipped from a tiny wax cup of lemonade and pondered the bizarre direction his life had taken in the past two weeks. Maybe he actually had died and Castiel was ushering him into some bizarre afterlife, where he wasn't a total fuck-up.

A bunch of kids the likes of whom he would have beat up in high school chattered happily in the chairs around him. For a second he and Castiel met eyes, and Castiel smiled at him. He smiled back.

"Hey everybody!" Ruby said, "Can we get a little 'ssh'? Raphael's planned a meeting on how to make sure you aren't accidentally letting Satan into your life via your iTunes, and I kind of want to get started…"

"Excuse me," Anna asked, with a pained sort of politeness. "But uh, can we start with business this week? I've got some stuff and I think Dean does too…"

"Yeah! Um. Totally." Dean agreed. Castiel nodded at him reassuringly.

"Ok Anna." Ruby smiled but her eyes were poison. "Shoot."

"Well, my friend Ayanne said she'd sent you an email about maybe having a meet-up with the Campus Muslims? I thought it might be nice for some interfaith unity…"

"Wait… campus Muslims?" Ruby repeated, "We're the Christians though."

"Yeah, but…"

"Different religions."

"Well, yes, but…"

"I guess I just don't see the point." Ruby said with a dismissive shrug. "Nice suggestion though…"

Before she could finish shooting Anna's idea to the ground the door to the ECM opened and Ruby glanced up to see who the latecomer was. Her expression clouded for the briefest moment into simmering rage.

"Hey!" A cute brunette girl in a leather jacket stood framed in the doorway. She grinned wickedly at Ruby for a second and then waved at everyone. "Sorry I'm late!"

Castiel's eyes widened and he grabbed Dean's arm.

"That's her…" He whispered, but he couldn't elaborate because Meg had grabbed a chair and was making everybody move so she could squish in right next to him.

"I'm Meg." She said. "And I am here to atone for all of my bad ways."

1 This was the most evil show I could imagine


	4. Chapter 4

"Oh um, hi Meg!" Anna said, trying to be welcoming, "Ruby, should we introduce ourselves?

"No." Ruby said flatly. "Raphael, you want to get started?"

"Wait!" Dean called out. Ruby glared at him. He stuttered and pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket. "Uh, I made a thing." He admitted.

Ruby narrowed her eyes, but she nodded at him to continue.

"So uh, the bake sale is next Tuesday, and I made like, a list of stuff we're gonna need. Cas is gonna make cupcakes I guess, and I'm gonna make pie, so that's covered, but like, don't anybody sign up for some weak sh-, stuff, like those grocery store sugar cookies. We want people to actually buy this junk. And the money is for… Ruby, what's the money for?"

"Rice bowls for people in Africa or something." She said shortly, glancing over at Meg, whose knee had grazed up against Cas's and hadn't moved. "Good job Dean." She growled. "Everybody sign his thing. Now lets get started, ok?"

While Raphael preached on about music being evil or something, and Anna tried and failed to be the bigger person and see the good side of their fearless leader, Castiel dealt with the emotional turmoil that comes from sitting next to a boy you're super crushin' on while the girl who got you arrested makes eyes at you. It's an extremely specific brand of emotional turmoil, and unpleasant.

Dean stayed after the meeting for a little bit to bully people into signing up to bake things. By the time he had everything sorted the meeting room was pretty much empty. Normally Anna stuck around to put the chairs away, but she'd shot right out of tonight's meeting in an irritated rush. For like, half a second he contemplated putting the chairs away himself, but it was too much of a suck-up move. He may be running a bake sale, but he was still Dean Winchester, damn it. He shoved the completed sign up sheet in his pocket with an extremely dorky sense of accomplishment and hurried to meet Castiel outside.

But there was no scruffy little nerd waiting for him on the steps to the ECM. Dean jogged down to the street to see if Cas was waiting for him there, but absolutely no one was in sight. Dean was alone with the streetlights and the occasional passing car. The thought of Castiel leaving with Meg struck Dean as utterly unacceptable for some reason, and he started to walk towards his dorm a little faster than usual just so he could make sure that wasn't what happened. As he was walking his phone buzzed.

"Yo Cas, where'd you go?" he asked cheerfully.

" Uh Dean? it's Sam."

"Sam?"

Dean hadn't prayed for his family that night in the prayer circle, but as ever it had been the first thing to spring to mind. He swallowed, feeling wholly unprepared to actually talk to his brother.

"Yeah, dude, did you think I was Cassie?" Sam said with a little laugh, referencing Dean's high school girlfriend who had dumped him because he was a dumbass.

"No dude, what's up? Is everything ok?"

"Yeah, Dean, everything's fine. It's just like, you haven't called for three months."

Dean's chest tightened. Had it been that long?

"Well, you know. College. It's busy." He said. "How's school?"

"Good. I might be valedictorian."

"That's awesome dude! Kickass!"

"Well, I'm ranked second right now. It just depends whether or not Kevin Tran's mom gets restationed to Idaho… it's not that great…"

"It's friggin' great!"

"How's college?"

"It's ok." Dean said. "I kind of feel like it's more your thing than mine…"

"No way." Sam sounded skeptical, and for some reason that brought on an almost incapacitating rush of homesickness to Dean. He missed picking up Sam from basketball practice and watching him in all his shitty plays. He missed wrestling him for the last slice of pizza, and beating all of his high scores on video games. He missed having the sole goal and purpose of his life be in the form of another human being.

"Miss you, kid." Dean said, and it was an understatement.

"Dean… I uh… Dad tried to call you, but there's kind of… news."

Dean hadn't pretty much raised Sam without figuring out what his different tones meant. And this wasn't sounding good.

"What's wrong?"

"Well, it's not wrong, it's just uh… so we've been living with Kate and Adam for a while now…"

"Mm." Dean said. His heart raced and he found that he couldn't walk in a straight line. He leaned against a light post.

"And, I know how you feel about it, but uh, Kate's really great, and Adam…"

"Adam? Dad's bastard who we didn't know existed until last year? Yeah, tell me about Adam."

"Don't be a dick Dean." Sam said. "Adam's fantastic."

Dean's throat clenched up and he looked down, unable to respond.

"Anyway, Dad told me he's going to propose to Kate. I thought you'd want to know."

Dean hung up the phone. It was childish and stupid and he knew it was, but he was in no condition to deal with that kind of information right now. And from Sam?! Dad had had SAM call him? He shoved his hands in his pockets, and felt the crumpled sign up sheet that had made him feel so proud earlier. What an idiot. Here he was, trying to put together some lame ass life here at college while his family just carried on without him, doing BETTER without him, even. Fuck this. Fuck dad.

He was in pretty bad shape when he walked into his dorm lobby, and he almost walked right past Castiel.

"Dean!" He heard a voice call out. Dean turned and saw his dark haired, scruffy friend, looking vaguely nervous and apologetic. He'd apparently been waiting in Dean's lobby the whole time.

"What… What are you doing here?" Dean asked, trying to look normal.

"I'm sorry I left so suddenly Dean. Meg persuaded me to walk her home. She apologized for getting me arrested and she told me she owes me a favor."

"What kind of favor?"

"She wasn't specific. I thought I should apologize for leaving you behind." Castiel's head tilted to the side in the way that it did. "Are you all right?"

"I'm…" Dean was about to say he was fine, but he realized that he didn't want to. Cas had seen him at his absolute least fine, and he wasn't going to be fooled by some bullshit. "My brother called." He explained lamely.

"Is he all right?"

"Yeah, I mean, he's fine. He's great. He's going to be valedictorian actually." Dean said.

"That's wonderful. I just thought… you seemed upset, I assumed he might have been injured in some way."

"No… God that would be horrible."

Dean suddenly looked very strange, and Castiel worried that he'd unintentionally said something upsetting. Like that time he'd explained the intricacies of feline AIDS to Uriel, whose cat had just died.

"So you just waited for me in the lobby to apologize?" Dean asked, voice soft.

"I didn't want you to think I'd abandoned you." Castiel said. "I hope that all is well with your family."

Dean picked Castiel up into a bear hug so suddenly that it nearly knocked Castiel's wind out.

"Thanks." Dean said, finally pushing his friend back. "For everything."

He jogged away over to the stairs, leaving a stunned and giddy Cas standing in the lobby, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

Castiel felt a strong need to make sure Dean's bake sale went well, so he put some time and energy into finding the perfect cupcake recipe to make. At last year's bake sale he'd brought in no-bake cookies, which had sold ok, but he felt that this year deserved better than just half assed three ingredient cookies. Dean needed something to go well in his life.

After a few hours research on the internet and an unintentional 5 hour "Cupcake Wars" marathon, he found a dark chocolate cherry cupcake recipe that looked fairly scrumptious, so he decided on that. Dean had texted him just as he was about to drive to the grocery store.

"just realized I don't have a kitchen in my dorm." The text read.

"You may use my kitchen. I will pick you up." Castiel responded.

About an hour and a half later they arrived back at Castiel's apartment with all the ingredients they needed for an epic bake day.

"Wow. I thought you said you had a kitchen." Dean teased, looking at the absurdly tiny dimensions of Castiel's cooking space.

Castiel gave him a censorious look.

"I believe my kitchen will do justice to your _pre-made pie crusts._" Castiel oozed scorn, and Dean cracked up.

They decided to make Castiel's cupcakes first. It was more difficult than they thought. Every three seconds they were checking the internet for things like "Do you spray the cupcake tin when you have the little paper cups?" and "plastic bowls for melting chocolate, yes or no?"

"No Cas, you put the can of cherries in the batter." Dean read off the torn and chocolatey recipe sheet.

"Are you certain we don't bake the cupcakes first and put the cherries in as filling?" Castiel stared at him dubiously. Somehow he'd managed to get a streak of chocolate above his left eye, and Dean had no plans to tell him it was there.

"Dude, you can read it yourself, you're supposed to put them in the freaking batter."

Castiel took the sheet and read it. He looked at Dean with an expression of extreme skepticism, but dumped the can into the batter.

"So are you going to let Meg do you any favors?" Dean asked, teasingly, leaning back against Cas's bare and depressing refrigerator door.

"She doesn't owe me anything." Cas shrugged, stirring the delicious dark chocolatey mixture.

"Dude, she got you arrested!"

"I've already forgiven her. And I think it's good enough that she is coming to Fellowship meetings."

"You're a saint." Dean said. Cas had started spooning the batter into cupcake tins, and Dean swiped a drip of chocolate off the counter to taste. He raised an eyebrow. "Nice! You're shaping up to be a cute little housewife Cas!"

Castiel rolled his eyes at Dean, but his heart (to his dismay) skipped a beat.

"So…" Dean continued, trying to steal more batter and getting death glares from Cas, "You think maybe Meg likes you?"

Cas stopped ladling. He looked up at Dean in confusion.

"Why?" He asked.

"Well Cas, generally when a girl makes out with you at a party and then stalks your life, she's interested." Dean laughed.

"I don't think so." Castiel said, but his hand slipped and he got batter all over the cupcake tin in exactly the way the website told him not to.

"I don't know man, it seems pretty cut and dry to me." Dean continued, helping Cas wipe up the mess. "She totally likes you."

"Nobody ever has before." Castiel responded flatly. The two-dozen cupcakes were all spooned out and ready but they realized that they'd forgotten to preheat the oven. Cas pressed the necessary buttons in frustration and then looked back at Dean.

"People have totally had crushes on you!" Dean scoffed. The thought of attending high school without a crowd of chicks following you around was alien to the absurdly good-looking young man. If you were writing a history of Dean Winchester's high school experience it would read like a soap opera.

"Not to my knowledge." Castiel said.

"Trust me, you are way too hot to not have anyone crush on you. They just didn't say anything." Dean assured his friend.

Cas fumbled and nearly dropped the batter bowl that he was trying to move to the sink.

"What are you doing!?" Dean protested. "Don't wash that! We haven't licked the bowl yet!"

"What?" Castiel asked, brow furrowing.

"Licked the bowl."

"That sounds unsanitary." Castiel said.

Dean rolled his eyes and gave Castiel a spoon, and took large wooden one they'd been stirring with for himself. He started scraping what batter he could off the side and licking it off the spoon. Castiel stared at him RAPTLY.

"Didn't you ever do this as a kid? Best friggin' part man. It's like, one of my best memories of my mom, doing this."

Dean smiled at Castiel warmly. Cas tentatively scraped his spoon around the sides of the bowl and ate a little bit of the batter. It was delicious, even he felt vaguely worried about the raw egg.

The oven beeped, finally preheated, and Cas reluctantly separated himself from Dean to put the cupcakes in.

Once the cupcakes were carefully placed in the extremely tiny oven and the timer was set, Castiel turned back to Dean and saw that he had a big smudge of chocolate on the side of his mouth.

"You… you have…" Castiel pointed towards Dean's mouth.

"Where?" Dean asked, teasingly trying to lick off the batter.

"Right there… you're making it worse." Castiel frowned.

Dean laughed and reached out to rub the smudge of chocolate over Cas's eyebrow.

"I wasn't going to say anything man, but that's been there for like ten years…"

But suddenly Castiel's hands were on the sides of his face and Dean was pulled roughly down into a kiss.

He tasted like chocolate and cherries. They both did.

Castiel pulled back first.

"Oh no." He said, covering his mouth and backing slowly away from Dean.

"You… wha?" Dean asked.

"I'm sorry." He said. "I had no intention… I'm very sorry."

Dean was still leaning against the edge of the counter, breathing slightly heavily and looking at Castiel with new eyes. Castiel looked so sweet and ashamed and he _still _had that stupid chocolate smudge...

"Don't stop." Dean said, softly, biting his lower lip. "You don't have to stop."

Castiel was all the way pressed up against the wall of his kitchen but he was still within arm's reach of Dean. If he wanted to he could reachout and touch Dean's face. Castiel's expression became serious, questioning.

"May I?" He practically whispered.

"Do it." Dean invited.

And they were kissing again, Castiel shoving Dean back against the counter with surprising strength. It was better than kissing Meg, much. With Meg it had been strange and wet and he'd been painfully aware of how bizarre a ritual it was to press your mouth against somebody else's.

But with Dean he felt like he was on fire and had the shivers all at once. The mechanics of putting your tongue in somebody else's mouth didn't matter because it was _Dean's _mouth. He kissed deeper and harder and from the groaning sound Dean was making he was doing something right. Encouraged, he held Dean tight and, in his enthusiasm, somehow managed to shove Dean flat up against the refrigerator. Dean grabbed Cas's waist and pulled it up against him and all of a sudden there was friction _there_, which was a whole new sensation entirely.

"Holy _fuck_ Cas!" Dean groaned, but Castiel stopped him talking with a kiss, and began to undo Dean's belt. He felt Dean's erection pressing against his jeans and grinned at the tiny whimpering sound Dean made as Castiel unzipped him. He nuzzled his face into Dean's neck and listened as Dean tried to get his breathing under control, all the while rubbing Dean's stiffening cock through his briefs. "Nobody's liked you before!?" Dean wheezed, hardly coherent. "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!"

Castiel grinned, exultant, kissed Dean fiercely again, and then lowered down to his knees. Freeing Dean's penis from its confinement, he licked his palm and began to rub it like he would his own. Dean had his head tilted back and was leaning against Castiel's refrigerator for dear life. Tentatively, Castiel put his tongue on the base of Dean's penis and licked slowly up the shaft.

"Mother of God…" He heard Dean blaspheme, and Castiel grinned. He tried the licking thing again, until he could tell from the way Dean was shaking that the time for teasing was past. He put his mouth around Dean's cock and began to give him an earnest if slightly inexperienced blowjob. Dean's hands cradled the sides of Cas's face, not pushing, keeping Cas entirely in control. Cas used his hands and his mouth and pretty soon Dean came with a rapturous shudder.

Castiel sat back on his kitchen floor, wiping his mouth and looking at Dean with an almost reverent love, and Dean sank down onto the floor with him, spent. He gave a little goofy half smile, still panting a little, then leaned forward and kissed Castiel sweetly.

The buzzer for the oven went off, with grating electric certainty. Dean laughed, almost having forgotten what they were doing before his world exploded.

"Oh yeah. Cupcakes." He said.

Castiel however, pulled back from Dean at the sound of the buzzer. His face, which had been so free and teasing and loving a second ago was suddenly almost blank. He was staring straight ahead at his tiny apartment with almost the same expression Dean had on the days he couldn't bring himself to get out of bed.

"Cas?" Dean asked, "Hey.. dude." He touched the side of Castiel's face tenderly and Castiel jerked back.

"We're making cupcakes for a Christian fundraiser." Castiel said, in his most emotionless, gravelly tone.

"Cas, you ok?"

"I just gave you a blowjob in my kitchen." Castiel said.

"And it was awesome?" Dean said.

"Please leave." Castiel said. He looked at Dean sort of desperately. "Don't you see? I'm supposed to be helping you. I've ruined it."

"You… Castiel, it's ok!" Dean tried to grab Castiel's arm again but Castiel scrambled up and away from him. He pulled on oven mitts and opened the oven door, trying to look normal but Dean could see the cupcake trays shaking as Castiel pulled them out.

"Please leave my apartment." Castiel said, not facing him. Dean wanted to reach out and comfort him, to wrap his arms around his shoulders, but Castiel's back was a brick wall. Dean had no option but to sort of ashamedly pull up his pants and retreat.

"Cas…"

"I'll see you later Dean, now go. Please."

Dean reluctantly left, feeling like a complete sack of shit. He had like, 4 miles to walk home, but he couldn't bring himself to text Ash for a ride. He shoved his hands in his pockets and started the trek, feeling ashamed and confused and guilty.

Castiel stared blankly at the cupcakes. They had puffed up perfectly and evenly, and even without frosting they looked tempting. The whole apartment smelled like warm chocolate and cherry.

He turned of the oven and sat down with a thud onto the rubbery tiling of his kitchen floor.


	5. Chapter 5

It was the day of the bake sale, and Dean had signed up to work a four-hour shift at the table with Castiel. He'd made a big poster to hang on the front that had a crappily drawn Jesus fish with the words "CCF BAKE SALE! IT'S LIKE THE FISH AND LOAVES THING ONLY WITH CUPCAKES AND NOT FREE!". Garth had cautiously told him the sign was "kinda busy" and could probably do with better concept art, but Dean thought it was funny. He had been sure that Cas would humor him about it, or even better make that cute face he did when he didn't get a joke but was trying to pretend he had. But Dean found his confidence in his ability to predict Castiel's responses to things had taken a blow. He smoothed out the tablecloth for the umpteenth time and took a seat.

Ever since the whole cupcake thing had gone down Dean had been running over everything that happened in his mind. From what he could tell everything had been totally awesome (if unexpected) and then suddenly a whole lot of not awesome.

Using some of his rusty basic logic, Dean worked his way to the conclusion that that was probably Castiel's first sex of any kind with anybody. Which was kind of a big deal. Dean had lost his virginity in the back of some high school chick's car when he was thirteen and it had been so totally horrible that he'd waited until he was sixteen to do anything remotely like it again. And if Castiel had waited until he was like, 21, he probably felt like it was a much bigger deal than it was. So a little freak out was to be expected.

The gay aspect of it was a whole other ball game (or team? Is that the metaphor?) but Dean felt totally prepared to handle that. He had been a huge douchebag homophobe for his entire early life until he'd drunkenly gone home with a male bartender on his 18th birthday and ever since he'd realized that there are WAY worse things to be than queer. He just did what he felt like when he felt like it and who gave a fuck? And if God was wasting his time hating on queer people it wasn't a God worth worshiping.

Dean had told everybody to drop off their baked goods at the table at 9:30 am so they'd have everything set up by 10. Anna was there with homemade pumpkin whoopee pies on the dot. Ruby texted at about 9:50 that she'd forgotten to bake anything but hey, best of luck, which pretty much made smoke come out of Anna's ears. Slowly the table filled up with cookies and cinnamon rolls and brownies and chocolate covered pretzel thingies, and most of it was homemade. Dean was too distracted to even gloat though. He didn't even sneak any of the broken cookies.

At 9:55, Castiel had yet to show. Anna looked at her watch.

"It's not like Castiel to be this late." She said, worriedly.

"Yeah… um… I guess…" Dean rubbed the back of his neck.

"I come as ambassador, and I bear gifts of pie." The dulcet, gravelly tones of a female smoker announced from behind them. To the shock of both Anna and Dean, Meg was approaching, carrying three pink bakery style boxes. "Castiel said he wasn't feeling well, and asked if I could cover his shift." Meg said with a kind of annoyed smirk. "I owed him a favor."

"You… you're covering for Cas?" Dean asked, trying not to let his crushing disappointment show. He failed.

"It wasn't exactly the kind of favor I had in mind but whatever." Meg sighed, shoving the boxes into Dean's hand. There was a post-it note on top of the box in Castiel's neat, scrunched handwriting.

"Sorry Dean. The cupcakes burned." It read. Dean remembered sitting on Castiel's floor as the buzzer went off and felt his cheeks flush. He crumpled up the post-it and put the pies on the table.

Each pie was perfect and beautifully baked; Dean admired them as he carefully took them out of their boxes. There was one each of apple, cherry, and blueberry. Castiel must have made them from the stuff Dean left at his apartment.

"Well, I have to go to class." Anna said. She gave Dean a sudden, cheerful hug. "Dean, you did a great job. This is the best bake sale spread we've had in years."

Dean made a noncommittal noise, unable to take his mind off of Castiel's note.

In Anna's absence it was just Dean and Meg, all set up to pitch baked goods to an unsuspecting public. Meg sat down with an unenthusiastic grunt. Selling shit had never really been her thing. She'd been a really crummy girl scout.

"Does Castiel have a girlfriend?" She asked, after about 10 minutes of awkward silence.

"Not fucking likely." Dean muttered, crossing his arms and staring at the ground.

Meg mulled that over while Dean willed 2pm to come faster.

Castiel sat in his bed, which he hadn't left since finishing Dean's pies. His expression was too gloomy for somebody who'd been living on pretty much nothing but chocolate cupcakes for the past several days. He bit another delicious bite miserably, getting crumbs all over his sheets and not bothering to brush them off.

They weren't burned. He just didn't want to part with them.

On his laptop was the reading he needed to do for his Theology course, but no matter how hard he tried to focus on it he found he couldn't. The fact that Dean was working the bake sale table, probably making small talk with Meg, kept niggling at the back of his mind.

He had given Dean a blowjob. The thought sent an embarrassed flush to his cheeks at the same time it kept him vaguely aroused. It was miserable to have such an unmistakable bodily reaction to something like this, even humiliating. In frustration he clicked out of the reading for his course and pushed his laptop off to the side of his bed. If he was going to lay here and wallow, he might as well just fucking get on with it.

Before he'd given Dean a blowjob his crush had been fairly innocent. Mentally perhaps he may have focused on Dean more than was fair, but in their actual human interaction he had been very well behaved. Whenever Dean put himself down, Castiel had tried to cheer him up. He'd offered to walk with him to class. Dean had lent him some classic rock tapes that Castiel fully intended to try to listen to once he got a time machine back to the eighties where he could find a tape player.

If, late at night, he'd imagined chaste kisses and maybe even some less chaste activities going on between the two of them, that was no sin a little bit of repentance couldn't handle.

Dean was going through a hard time at college; that was clear. Castiel imagined that there was something going wrong in Dean's family life as well, but he didn't know what it was. He wanted Dean to feel comfortable telling him about it. He wanted to help Dean see how great he was.

Blowing Dean, so far as Castiel could figure, did nothing to accomplish either of those goals. It had been stupid and selfish and probably unsanitary and he still wasn't entirely sure on where God stood on the issue. He'd checked out some Christian websites to try to clarify the whole homosexuality thing but those had left him angry and confused and still completely lost.

Confused and frustrated and still somewhat aroused, Castiel gave in and decided to watch tv online until he could get his thoughts back under control. Every time he shut his eyes all he could think about was the way Dean had felt under his fingers and the way Dean had cupped his face in his hands and kissed him so sweetly… no.

Castiel took another bite of cupcake as a sort of self-punishment and started another marathon of Cupcake Wars.

Dean showed up 15 minutes early to that week's CCF meeting with a Manila envelope full of cash from the bake sale. Of course, the room was a mess from the previous club's meeting earlier that day. The fact that the Campus Anarchists were not a very organized group should surprise no one; the fact that the ECM allowed them to use the space was the real shocker. Dean blew off a little bit of nervous energy by setting up chairs and recycling empty Gatorade bottles that had been scattered all over the beige floor.

Anna showed up to a clean room and a circle of empty chairs, apart from the one occupied by Dean Winchester. He was more fidgety than usual, so she sat next to him and chatted as everybody started to trickle in. Dean's eyes would flash up hopefully every time the door opened, only to drop again when it wasn't who he wanted it to be.

Castiel finally slunk through the door about a minute before the meeting was meant to start. His hair was mussed, and his clothes were wrinkled and unkempt. The stunning blue eyes that looked up and directly into Dean's were framed by dark circles.

Dean smiled at Cas, and tilted his head in invitation. He'd kept the seat next to him open, and Meg had claimed the seat on the other side knowing who was likely to sit there. Castiel bit his bottom lip, but sat next to Dean just as Ruby began the meeting.

"So, before we start… Dean did some stuff this week. Dean! How many cakes did you sell?!"

"Um…" Dean stood up. "We made about 500 bucks from the bake sale, which I turned in to Raphael, and should be enough to buy like a bunch of rice or whatever. Thanks for helping out everybody, I really appreciate all the home baked stuff we got."

"BIG HAND FOR DEAN!" Anna said, and everybody cheered. Ruby smiled to herself. The best thing about charity bake sales like this was you got to tell all the campus big wigs how much money you made but literally nobody ever checked to see where that 500 bucks ended up. So in her case she got all the self-righteousness, plus a pretty nice new pair of shoes.

"Ok, so this week was my turn to plan the meeting." Ruby said, eying everybody around the circle until she got a few grateful nods, "And I had an idea. So, I know how distracting it can be to concentrate on like, loving God or whatever when we're constantly being tempted by the presence of the opposite sex." She glared pointedly at Meg, who grinned evilly and put her arm around the back of Castiel's chair in the least convincing yawn/stretch move the world has ever seen. Her eyes stayed locked on Ruby's.

"So." Ruby growled. "I thought tonight we'd split off into a girl group and a boy group so we don't have to worry about being tempted."

Dean raised his eyebrows slightly. But it was Anna that spoke up.

"Wait, you think we'll be more comfortable without the presence of the opposite sex?" She asked, and her voice was icy.

"Yeah." Ruby said. "You know. Boys and hormones and stuff. It'll be easier for them not to look down our shirts if we just like, go to another room." Her eyes flicked over to Meg, whose hand was creeping closer and closer to the back of Castiel's neck. Cas hadn't noticed but Ruby sure as hell had.

"That's… that's so sexist I can't even…" Anna sputtered, so angry she couldn't get a full sentence out. Dean grinned at her supportively. He wasn't entirely sure why she was so pissed but it was fun to watch.

"It's not about feminism Anna, Christ. I mean, obviously we're all hormonal and stuff and I just think everybody would appreciate having an all girls or all boys meeting." Ruby explained, irritated. Meg snorted.

"I wouldn't." Anna said. "I don't think that my presence is drawing any boys away from God, and if it is it's not my fault and I don't deserve to be punished for it."

There was a tense, uncomfortable silence. Both Dean and Castiel were pondering the other major flaw in Ruby's plan, which was pretty obvious to them if not to say, Anna or Meg. That is to say, the opposite sex isn't always the most tempting one.

"Nobody's getting punished Anna. We're just having a separate meeting." Ruby said, speaking slowly and with threatening diction. Everyone in the room felt like they'd building up static electricity and were just about to touch a metal doorknob.

"Separate but equal right? Screw this. I'm going home." Anna hissed. She grabbed her stuff and left out the front door. Everybody else sat in excruciating awkwardness.

"Ok, well, Anna's gone." Ruby said, clapping decisively. "That was weird. Ladies, with me. Dudes, you stay in here." And with that Ruby took all of the female members of the campus Christian Fellowship out of the room, forcibly grabbing Meg by an arm and dragging her away from Castiel.

It had been a pretty slim turnout that night, so the boy group consisted of a blonde dude in a Wienie Hut uniform, Castiel, Dean, and a senior named Gabe whose attendance at this stuff was sketchy at best. Leaderless, they all stared at each other in silence for a few awkward seconds. Castiel could practically feel Dean staring at him and his cheeks flushed red.

"So if I understand correctly, we're just supposed to talk about chicks right?" Gabe said, unwrapping a thing of Sweet-Tarts. "Well, Anna's kind of hot. Actually, she's hot enough I think I'm going to follow her lead and skedaddle." He stood up and brushed his shirt off. "You kids have fun now."

"I um, I have work actually. I was planning on leaving early anyway." The dude in the red and white striped getup said, standing up to join.

"And where could you possibly work?" Gabe asked.

"W- Wienie…"

"Shh Samandiriel you precious baby, that was a joke. Come. Join me." Gabe patted Sam roughly on the back and the two of them left together.

And then there were two.

"Well. This is awkward." Dean said, smiling tiredly at Castiel. "Thank God there're no chicks here or I'd be totally sexually frustrated."

"I should have gone to the bake sale." Castiel said in a rush, starting about halfway through a conversation that had been taking place in his head.

"It's ok. I get it." Dean said reaching over to his obviously stressed out friend. "You needed time."

"I'm fairly positive I've ruined everything." Castiel said miserably.

"What? Dude. Nothing is ruined. Everything is fine." Dean patted Castiel's shoulder roughly, in a lame, inexpert attempt to make his friend un-sad. Castiel finally looked back up at Dean with a sad appreciation.

"You're sweet Dean. You try to hide it but you're very sweet."

"I'm not sweet, dickhead, I'm a rugged manly man. Now shut the fuck up and kiss me."

Castiel only shook his head at that. So Dean tilted Cas's head up to meet his and kissed him gently.

It was stupid and pretty much the opposite of how Castiel had planned on this interaction going, but Dean just felt so warm and safe that Castiel kissed back. They were, however, still at a CCF meeting so they both pulled back after a few pleasant seconds. Dean couldn't resist pulling Cas into a hug afterwards though. With his head rested against Dean's shoulder, Cas groaned.

"I'm supposed to be taking care of _you_." He despaired.

"I don't need people taking care of me." Dean said. "I take care of other people. That's all I'm good at."

Castiel pulled back so he could get a better look at Dean's face.

"You can't actually believe that about yourself?" Castiel asked.

"All I've ever been good at was doing right by my family. Ever." Dean shrugged. "It's who I am."

"Dean, it's all right to be taken care of." Castiel said.

Dean stared at Castiel for a few seconds after that, trying to figure out what it meant. He wanted to kiss Castiel to shut him up, to stop him saying all that stupid shit, but he found that, to his dismay, tears were starting to stream down his cheeks. He tried to wipe them off quickly, before he lost any more vestige of his self-image but they just kept coming. Castiel took Dean's hand in his and started rubbing his back.

"Wow, looks like shit got real in the boy's room." Meg Masters said.

Dean looked up, wholly and immediately consumed with humilation, and Castiel jerked away from him in shock.

The girls started to file in, and Castiel and Dean tried to compose themselves.

Ruby took in Dean's tear stained face with a kind of sneer.

"Wow Castiel! You win the Barbara Walters award!" She quipped.

"You didn't miss anything. We just talked about our periods and stuff." Meg said. "Where'd the other boys go?"

"Ruby, may we be excused?" Castiel asked. "I think Dean wants to go home."

"But we've still got the end prayer!" Ruby said. "Suck it up Dean, you can make it ten more minutes right? Big guy?"

Dean glared at Ruby, wiping his face embarrassedly.

"Sure. Whatever." He said, taking a few deep breaths.

As Castiel and Dean sat down on the floor in the prayer circle and Ruby tried to find the candle to light, they gripped one another's hands tightly. Dean felt kind of woozy and shaky, but he was determined not to puss out.

Neither Dean nor Castiel heard anybody else's prayers as they went around the circle, all they could think about were the firm grip of the other's hand. When it was Castiel's turn he just asked God for clarity, and then looked over at Dean.

Dean stared at the candle in the center of the circle.

"My mom died when I was little." He began. "And my Dad did his best but I kind of ended up raising my little brother." Castiel squeezed Dean's hand again and looked at him worriedly. Dean's eyes were just a reflection of the candle though. He went on.

"Turns out Dad has another kid, this kid named Adam that he had with this random woman. We just found out like, a year ago. And now that I'm at college, Dad moved in with her and her kid and he took my baby brother and now they're like, a family. But I'm not in it. And you know, it's fine, they're happy, or whatever, but it's not _my_ family. I guess… I just, I… _pray_… that I can just come to terms with the fact that I'm on my own now. Nobody needs me."

"Oh Dean!" Castiel couldn't help but exclaim and he threw his arms around his friend.

This wasn't exactly unusual for the CCF. People were always hugging and crying in the prayer circle. That was precisely what the prayer circle was for. But Meg eyed the two boys clinging to each other with a kind of skepticism. She looked over at Ruby, who, to her disgust, looked ecstatic.

"Oh fuck me, are you gay!?" Meg asked, realizing with irritation exactly what she was looking at.

Some of the other girls in the group gasped. Ruby grinned wider.

Castiel disentangled himself from the hug and looked at Meg in shock. Dean answered first.

"None of your business." He growled.

"HA!" Ruby laughed in triumph, a reaction that was completely incomprehensible to Dean and Castiel. She grinned at Meg. "They're clearly gay. Which is totally cool because we're a forgiving bunch here at the CCF and we take fags even if God hates them."

That got even more gasps. Everyone in the circle was suddenly staring at Ruby instead of Dean and Castiel, and from Meg's tiny little smirk Ruby began to realize that she might have misspoken.

"Anna's right." Dean said, free from all embarrassment. "You really are a scumbag."

Ruby sighed. "I prefer 'bitch' but whatever." She admitted.

"Goodbye Ruby." Castiel said. He and Dean gathered their stuff to leave. Once they were outside Castiel turned to Dean angrily. "She was such an… assbutt." He practically whispered the insult. It was probably the meanest thing he'd ever said in his life.

"Assbutt?" Dean repeated, almost laughing. But Castiel looked up at him so earnestly that Dean straightened his face again. "Total fucking assbutt." He agreed.

They walked together for a few minutes, in silence. Dean was the first to speak.

"Do you think I'm crazy?" He whispered.

"Dean, I think you're wonderful. I think you could be president." Castiel replied.

"Of the college?"

"Of the world."

"_You're_ fucking crazy."

"I believe what I believe."

Dean reached out and took Castiel's hand.

"You ok with this?" He asked.

Castiel didn't say anything; he just pressed himself closer to Dean in response. They walked the rest of the way to Dean's dorm like two 1950's teenagers going steady. Outside the dorm, in the shadows by the entrance, Dean pulled Castiel into a corner and kissed him deeply.

"This is not at all what I intended to happen when I made you my personal mission." Castiel said, breathlessly.

"Best guardian angel ever." Dean grinned, kissing him again.

EPILOGUE

The worried wrinkle in Sam Winchester's forehead was pronounced as he stared at his little brother's bow tie, which was stubbornly sitting at a jaunty angle despite his best efforts.

"I hate everything and everyone." Adam Milligan said, looking at Sam hopelessly.

"Shut up, we can handle this." Sam said, untying the damn thing for the eightieth time.

"Where's Bobby?" Adam asked.

"He's helping dad out, doing his best man thing."

"Where's dad?"

"Throwing up in the bathroom I think. He's nervous." Sam took a step back and admired his work. Before his eyes the bow tie somehow tilted from a solid 180 degree line to a 45 degree angle. "HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE." Sam hissed at the offensive, unnatural thing.

"You guys are hopeless." The gruff voice of Sam's older brother came from the doorway. Dean was all suited up and looked like freaking James Bond. His bow tie could have been in an Armani ad.

"DEAN!" Sam praised God or Jah or whatever. "Bow tie! Help!"

Dean walked over to Adam, who stared up at his oldest brother looking awkward and very very fourteen.

"You doing all right?" Dean asked Adam as he undid Sam's shoddy work.

"Better than dad." Adam squeaked. "He's throwing up."

Dean sort of smirked. It was still weird to hear this little guy that he hardly even know call his dad "dad", but he was starting to get used to it. John Winchester had chosen to have his three sons be his groomsmen, and as such had forced the three of them to spend time together. He finished tying the bow tie, which, to both Sam and Adam's delight, stayed put.

"Look at you, you could be a waiter on a cruise ship." Dean smiled.

"Dean?" Sam asked. "Cuff links. How?"

"I leave for a year and you guys forget how to dress yourselves? Holy crap." Dean complained but he couldn't help but smile. Sam rolled his eyes and that just made it better. When they finally had all the wrinkles smoothed Dean clapped his hands on both of his brother's shoulders as they looked at their reflections in the mirror. "Well aren't we a bunch of handsome bastards?" Dean announced.

Adam looked up at Dean dubiously, but decided to let that one slide.

"Dean?" Castiel asked from the doorway, looking pretty dapper himself although his tie had somehow wound up backwards. "Would you like a picture with your brothers?"

"CAS!" Dean turned around and posed like a model, lips pursed, one eyebrow raised. "What do you think?" He asked through his Blue Steel.

"I think you're the most handsome man I've ever seen in my life." Castiel replied in his honest deadpan. "Would you like a picture with your brothers?"

John had handled Dean bringing a boy home with startling calmness. He'd made one dumb joke about "isn't it girls who go to college and have a gay stage?" but after a really pissed look from his eldest son he'd just dropped it completely. Sam thought that Cas was the greatest thing in the world, and basically tripped over himself trying to be friends. Dean was equally relieved and irritated at that, although he couldn't explain why.

Adam didn't give a fuck that Dean was gay. He was kind of hesitant about these three Winchester assholes marrying into his happy little family, but he was willing to give it a shot.

Cas didn't get a chance to take a picture of just the three brothers because a very cranky and uncomfortable looking Bobby Singer stomped into the room. Bobby in a tux just seemed unnatural, like somebody had put a fedora on an octopus or something.

"Idjits, we're supposed to be out there for pictures five minutes ago. Stop primping like a bunch of damn peacocks and do your job!"

He hustled the boys out of the room, but Dean managed to sneak over to Cas before he was placed at the mercy of "Stu's Photo Memories". He grabbed Cas's tie and used it to pull him into a kiss.

"Your tie's backwards, you big nerd." He whispered. Castiel frowned, then quickly and surprisingly grabbed Dean's shoulders, shoved him into the wall and kissed him passionately. When he pulled back Dean was breathing heavily.

"Now you're mussed up too." Castiel replied wickedly and he hurried out to take his seat. Dean smiled and ran out to join his baby brothers before Bobby ripped his throat out. He had been so scared that he was losing his family. He hadn't thought that maybe he was gaining one.

**AN: And as I am so apt to do, I ended with fluff. Screw everyone, I love fluff, I'm just a fluffy person. Thanks to everybody who read this, I had such a good time writing it! I appreciate all of your comments more than you know. Have a fluffy day.**


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